For safety reasons, the Chinese government may ban fully concealed door handle designs

[PCauto] The trend of hidden car door handle designs is facing restrictions from regulations. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China has recently released a draft, specifically targeting requirements for hidden door handles.

The draft clearly states that its purpose is to address the safety hazards brought by such trendy designs. These issues include insufficient strength, control logic flaws, difficulty in recognition and operation, and most crucially, failure during power outages.

The requirements of this draft are very specific: each car door (excluding the rear door) must be equipped with a mechanical release mechanism, both inside and outside the vehicle.

A more detailed regulation specifies that external door handles must provide an operable space relative to the vehicle’s surface in any state (whether retracted or extended). The required dimensions for this space are designated to accommodate a specific module (approximately 60mm×20mm×25mm).

This technical detail almost directly declares that fully flush door handles, with no physical grooves or protrusions at all, will no longer comply with regulatory requirements.

This is because in the event of a collision causing a power outage, such handles, which rely entirely on electronic signals to pop out, may fail to operate, greatly hindering passenger self-rescue and external rescue efforts.

The draft also standardizes the installation position of door handles, aiming to ensure that in any emergency, both rescuers and passengers can quickly and intuitively locate and operate them.

The purpose of these meticulous regulations is to ensure that, in the event of serious accidents such as airbag deployment or battery thermal runaway, individuals can manually open the car doors from inside or outside without the need for any tools.

In addition to door handles, this draft also specifies requirements for low-voltage batteries (low-voltage auxiliary system batteries), requiring that after a collision, the battery must remain in its original position with intact wiring connections, no chemical substances must leak into the passenger compartment, and no short circuits, continuous smoke, or fire may occur within 30 minutes post-collision.

This regulation is aimed at preventing secondary hazards after a collision and ensuring the safety of passengers during the critical golden rescue time following an accident.

It is understood that many popular electric vehicles currently on sale in the Chinese market, especially mid-to-high-end models, widely adopt fully hidden door handle designs to highlight a sense of technological sophistication and reduce wind resistance.

In fact, there are already compromise and safer solutions available in the market. For example, models such as the AITO M7, certain new models under Zeekr, and Xiaomi SU7, feature "semi-hidden" or visibly mechanical unlocking structure door handles.

This design visually retains a simple and smooth shape, but always keeps a manually operable physical mechanism, balancing aesthetics and safety.